Private employees to be covered under IT service law

Even private players would be liable for prosecution under the rechristened electronic services delivery bill, which will also have minimum penalty for failure to provide online services on time.

Updated on: Jan 17, 2013, 19:21:03 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Even private players would be liable for prosecution under the rechristened electronic services delivery bill, which will also have minimum penalty for failure to provide online services on time.

The Electronic Services Delivery Bill, 2011, introduced in Parliament in 2010 after social activist Anna Hazare’s agitation against corruption had prescribed a fine of up to Rs. 5,000 for first violation and of Rs. 20,000 for persistent failures only on government officials.

A Parliamentary Standing Committee which analyzed the bill found that penalty provisions would not work as most of the information technology services of the government are “out-sourced”. The committee felt that the government officials would push the onus of any default on private employees, who had no accountability under the proposed law.

Agreeing with the observations of the committee, the Department of Information Technology has agreed to make appropriate changes in the draft bill to cover all employees of a private agency engaged to delivery public services online.

The department on basis of Law Ministry’s advice has decided to insert a specific provision in section 29 on penalty provisions to bring employees of private agency within ambit of the proposed law.

“The outsourced employees are under contract with the government and the government can proceed against them for any contravention of the contract,” a senior government official said.

The department has also decided to strengthen the penalty provisions by prescribing minimum penalty on the pattern of the fine prescribed in the Right To Information Act. The RTI Act provides deduction of Rs. 250 per day from salary of an official for each day of delay in giving information after mandatory 30 days.

However, the maximum penalty for first offence would be Rs 5,000 and then up to Rs 20,000 for persistent violations of the law. The fine would be imposed on basis of an appeal filed by the online service user either with the state level or the Central level commissioners to be appointed once the law is enacted.

A government official said that most state governments have agreed to adopt the proposed law, which gives them minimum five years and maximum eight years to provide all public service through online mode.

7.7 crore e-transactions in 2011

Bihar and Andhra Pradesh are leading in providing online public services with over one crore applications in 2011.

Goa has put most (173) public services on online mode.

Uttar Pradesh the worst with less than 10 lakh applications in a year.

Poor e-transactions in all north-eastern states, Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand.

Salient features of the bill

All public services to be provided on online mode within minimum five years and maximum eight years
Time-line to be prescribed for providing each service such as delivering online birth and death certificates, appointment for getting driving license, obtaining marriage certificate and so on.

Set up commissions at Central and State levels to hear complaint from people.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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